Nudging and Boosting Hertwig, Ralph; Grüne-Yanoff, Till
Perspectives on psychological science,
11/2017, Letnik:
12, Številka:
6
Journal Article
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In recent years, policy makers worldwide have begun to acknowledge the potential value of insights from psychology and behavioral economics into how people make decisions. These insights can inform ...the design of nonregulatory and nonmonetary policy interventions—as well as more traditional fiscal and coercive measures. To date, much of the discussion of behaviorally informed approaches has emphasized “nudges,” that is, interventions designed to steer people in a particular direction while preserving their freedom of choice. Yet behavioral science also provides support for a distinct kind of nonfiscal and noncoercive intervention, namely, “boosts.” The objective of boosts is to foster people’s competence to make their own choices—that is, to exercise their own agency. Building on this distinction, we further elaborate on how boosts are conceptually distinct from nudges: The two kinds of interventions differ with respect to (a) their immediate intervention targets, (b) their roots in different research programs, (c) the causal pathways through which they affect behavior, (d) their assumptions about human cognitive architecture, (e) the reversibility of their effects, (f) their programmatic ambitions, and (g) their normative implications. We discuss each of these dimensions, provide an initial taxonomy of boosts, and address some possible misconceptions.
Modeling the Predictive Social Mind Tamir, Diana I.; Thornton, Mark A.
Trends in cognitive sciences,
03/2018, Letnik:
22, Številka:
3
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The social mind is tailored to the problem of predicting the mental states and actions of other people. However, social cognition researchers have only scratched the surface of the predictive social ...mind. We discuss here a new framework for explaining how people organize social knowledge and use it for social prediction. Specifically, we propose a multilayered framework of social cognition in which two hidden layers – the mental states and traits of others – support predictions about the observable layer – the actions of others. A parsimonious set of psychological dimensions structures each layer, and proximity within and across layers guides social prediction. This simple framework formalizes longstanding intuitions from social cognition, and in doing so offers a generative model for deriving new hypotheses about predictive social cognition.
We propose a multilayered framework consisting of two hidden layers – traits and states –and one observable layer – actions. This framework address two key challenges in social cognition: organizing social knowledge efficiently, and using it for social prediction.
fMRI, combined with advanced analytic techniques such as representational similarity analysis and encoding models, offers a way to reveal the dimensional structure organizing each layer of social cognition.
Three dimensions – rationality, social impact, and valence – organize the layer of mental states, while three dimensions – power, sociality, and valence – organize the domain of traits. Cross-encoding analysis suggests that these layers may be partially overlapping.
Proximity within state space predicts perceived and actual transitional probabilities between emotions, and mediates the accuracy of one's perceptions. Thus, the organizational dimensions of social content may scaffold social prediction.
Highlights • Defines and distinguishes fear of the unknown and intolerance of uncertainty. • Contextualizes fear of the unknown and intolerance of uncertainty in current models. • Synthesizes current ...research on unknowns, uncertainty, anxiety, and depression
Suicide and suicidal behaviour Turecki, Gustavo, Prof; Brent, David A, Prof
The Lancet,
03/2016, Letnik:
387, Številka:
10024
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Summary Suicide is a complex public health problem of global importance. Suicidal behaviour differs between sexes, age groups, geographic regions, and sociopolitical settings, and variably associates ...with different risk factors, suggesting aetiological heterogeneity. Although there is no effective algorithm to predict suicide in clinical practice, improved recognition and understanding of clinical, psychological, sociological, and biological factors might help the detection of high-risk individuals and assist in treatment selection. Psychotherapeutic, pharmacological, or neuromodulatory treatments of mental disorders can often prevent suicidal behaviour; additionally, regular follow-up of people who attempt suicide by mental health services is key to prevent future suicidal behaviour.
Recent decades have seen a surge of research interest in the phenomenon of healthy individuals who experience auditory verbal hallucinations, yet do not exhibit distress or need for care. The aims of ...the present systematic review are to provide a comprehensive overview of this research and examine how healthy voice-hearers may best be conceptualised in relation to the diagnostic versus ‘quasi-‘ and ‘fully-dimensional’ continuum models of psychosis. A systematic literature search was conducted, resulting in a total of 398 article titles and abstracts that were scrutinised for appropriateness to the present objective. Seventy articles were identified for full-text analysis, of which 36 met criteria for inclusion. Subjective perceptual experience of voices, such as loudness or location (i.e., inside/outside head), is similar in clinical and non-clinical groups, although clinical voice-hearers have more frequent voices, more negative voice content, and an older age of onset. Groups differ significantly in beliefs about voices, control over voices, voice-related distress, and affective difficulties. Cognitive biases, reduced global functioning, and psychiatric symptoms such as delusions, appear more prevalent in healthy voice-hearers than in healthy controls, yet less than in clinical samples. Transition to mental health difficulties is increased in HVHs, yet only occurs in a minority and is predicted by previous mood problems and voice distress. Whilst healthy voice-hearers show similar brain activity during hallucinatory experiences to clinical voice-hearers, other neuroimaging measures, such as mismatch negativity, have been inconclusive. Risk factors such as familial and childhood trauma appear similar between clinical and non-clinical voice-hearers. Overall the results of the present systematic review support a continuum view rather than a diagnostic model, but cannot distinguish between ‘quasi’ and ‘fully’ dimensional models. Healthy voice-hearers may be a key resource in informing transdiagnostic approaches to research of auditory hallucinations.
•Subjective perceptual experiences of voices appear similar in clinical and non-clinical groups.•Healthy voice-hearers hear voices less frequently, with less negative content, more perceived control and from an earlier age.•Healthy and clinical voice-hearers differ in beliefs about voices, voice-related distress, and affective difficulties.•Healthy voice-hearers show more cognitive biases, psychiatric symptoms and functional impairments than healthy controls.•Risk factors such as familial and childhood trauma appear similar between clinical and non-clinical voice-hearers.
Measurement instruments assessing multiple emotions during epistemic activities are largely lacking. We describe the construction and validation of the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales, which ...measure surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, anxiety, frustration, and boredom occurring during epistemic cognitive activities. The instrument was tested in a multinational study of emotions during learning from conflicting texts (N = 438 university students from the United States, Canada, and Germany). The findings document the reliability, internal validity, and external validity of the instrument. A seven-factor model best fit the data, suggesting that epistemically-related emotions should be conceptualised in terms of discrete emotion categories, and the scales showed metric invariance across the North American and German samples. Furthermore, emotion scores changed over time as a function of conflicting task information and related significantly to perceived task value and use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This article addresses the multiple ways in which emotions can influence attitudes and persuasion via primary and secondary (meta-) cognition. Using the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion as ...a guide, we review evidence for five fundamental processes that occur at different points along the elaboration continuum. When the extent of thinking is constrained to be low, emotions influence attitudes by relatively simple processes that lead them to change in a manner consistent with the valence of the emotion. When thinking is constrained to be high, emotions can serve as arguments in favour of a proposal if they are relevant to the merits of the advocacy or they can bias thinking if the emotion precedes the message. If thinking is high and emotions become salient after thinking, they can lead people to rely or not rely on the thoughts generated either because the emotion leads people to like or dislike their thoughts (affective validation) or feel more confident or doubtful in their thoughts (cognitive validation). When thinking is unconstrained, emotions influence the extent of thinking about the persuasive communication. Although prior theories have addressed one or more of these fundamental processes, no other approach has integrated them into one framework.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
In virtually all areas of psychology, the question of whether a particular construct has a prospective effect on another is of fundamental importance. For decades, the cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) ...has been the model of choice for addressing this question. However, CLPMs have recently been critiqued, and numerous alternative models have been proposed. Using the association between low self-esteem and depression as a case study, we examined the behavior of seven competing longitudinal models in 10 samples, each with at least four waves of data and sample sizes ranging from 326 to 8,259. The models were compared in terms of convergence, fit statistics, and consistency of parameter estimates. The traditional CLPM and the random intercepts cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) converged in every sample, whereas the other models frequently failed to converge or did not converge properly. The RI-CLPM exhibited better model fit than the CLPM, whereas the CLPM produced more consistent cross-lagged effects (both across and within samples) than the RI-CLPM. We discuss the models from a conceptual perspective, emphasizing that the models test conceptually distinct psychological and developmental processes, and we address the implications of the empirical findings with regard to model selection. Moreover, we provide practical recommendations for researchers interested in testing prospective associations between constructs and suggest using the CLPM when focused on between-person effects and the RI-CLPM when focused on within-person effects.
For 40 years, research on impression formation and attitudes has relied on dual-process theories that represent knowledge in a single associative network. Although such models explain priming effects ...and some implicit responses, they are generally silent on other forms of learning and on the interface of social cognition with perception and action. Meanwhile, advances in cognitive neuroscience reveal multiple, interacting forms of learning and memory (e.g., semantic associative memory, Pavlovian conditioning, and instrumental learning), with detailed models of their operations, neural bases, and connections with perceptual and behavioral systems. This memory systems perspective offers a more refined, neurally plausible model of social cognition and attitudes that, I argue, provides a useful and generative account of human social behavior.
To date, research on impression formation and attitudes has relied on dual-process theories in which knowledge is represented in a single associative network.
Classic dual-process models explain priming effects and concept learning, but have trouble explaining how attitudes and impressions relate to affect, action, and perception.
Meanwhile, advances in cognitive neuroscience reveal multiple, interacting forms of learning and memory, with detailed models of their operations and neural bases.
This memory systems perspective offers a more refined, neurally plausible model of social cognition and attitudes that suggests a more precise and generative account of human social behavior.
A key component of research on human sentence processing is to characterize the processing difficulty associated with the comprehension of words in context. Models that explain and predict this ...difficulty can be broadly divided into two kinds, expectation‐based and memory‐based. In this work, we present a new model of incremental sentence processing difficulty that unifies and extends key features of both kinds of models. Our model, lossy‐context surprisal, holds that the processing difficulty at a word in context is proportional to the surprisal of the word given a lossy memory representation of the context—that is, a memory representation that does not contain complete information about previous words. We show that this model provides an intuitive explanation for an outstanding puzzle involving interactions of memory and expectations: language‐dependent structural forgetting, where the effects of memory on sentence processing appear to be moderated by language statistics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that dependency locality effects, a signature prediction of memory‐based theories, can be derived from lossy‐context surprisal as a special case of a novel, more general principle called information locality.
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